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With­out ques­tion, most ERPs have a long life span — or at least longer than any­one thought pos­si­ble. So, it’s not unusu­al to come across a busi­ness that has a sys­tem that is 10 to 20 years old or even dat­ing back to the 1990s. But after years of upgrades, cus­tomiza­tions, and add-ons, that ​“reli­able” tech­nol­o­gy foun­da­tion is becom­ing a stum­bling block for busi­ness transformation.

Hubert Del­loye, a glob­al ERP archi­tect at Val­lourec, summed this up fit­ting­ly in a pre­vi­ous ASUG web­cast, How to Tur­bocharge Your ECC in 6 Weeks:

“Any­one who is an SAP cus­tomer under­stands the need to lever­age ERPs as much as pos­si­ble. But at the same time, it must be rec­og­nized that these soft­ware invest­ments are real­ly a sys­tem of record, not tools for pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, automa­tion, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. And ulti­mate­ly, this means that cer­tain new inno­va­tions should not be added to the ERP.”

How­ev­er, SAP cus­tomers have been forced to cus­tomize their SAP ERP sys­tem over the years to accom­mo­date new inte­gra­tions, process­es, appli­ca­tions, and key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors. In return, a large amount of insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, process­es, and busi­ness log­ic has been added to the sys­tem. This out­come has left their SAP core unclean, increas­ing their tech­ni­cal debt and mak­ing future dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion com­pli­cat­ed and risky. 

What hap­pens next? SAP advis­es its cus­tomers to migrate their lega­cy sys­tem to SAP S/4HANA. How­ev­er, a 2021 ASUG sur­vey found that only 33% of SAP cus­tomers have migrat­ed to the mod­ern and intel­li­gent ERP. For the remain­ing 67%, the cost and effort to reassess data repos­i­to­ries, advance data man­age­ment, recre­ate process­es from scratch, recon­nect core and edge tech­nolo­gies, and adjust how peo­ple work are too much to bear right now. This process comes with a cer­tain amount of risk and poten­tial dis­rup­tion, and often con­tin­ues for an extend­ed time frame.

Tech­ni­cal Debt and Lega­cy Apps: Hold­ing the Busi­ness Back

As the mar­ket­place con­tin­ues to dig­i­tal­ly trans­form and favor cloud adop­tion, com­pa­nies demand cus­tomized web and mobile appli­ca­tions to mod­ern­ize their busi­ness process­es. Doing so can help them increase work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, low­er oper­at­ing costs, improve qual­i­ty data, and respond to mar­ket dynam­ics with greater agility. 

To accom­plish this goal, devel­op­ers are focused on learn­ing pro­gram­ming lan­guages such as JavaScript, Python, Java, and visu­al devel­op­ment tools. But exist­ing tech­ni­cal debt cre­at­ed over the years requires ABAP devel­op­ers — on which many SAP solu­tions are based — to main­tain, change, and build new process­es. Yet, accord­ing to Slash­Da­ta, the amount of ABAP devel­op­ers avail­able in the mar­ket is tiny com­pared to any oth­er preva­lent pro­gram­ming lan­guage, cre­at­ing a major short­age of resources for SAP-cen­tric enterprises.

Want­ed: A Friend­lier Approach to Modernization

Despite a shrink­ing pool of devel­op­ers with the skills required to sup­port SAP-based sys­tems, busi­ness­es rec­og­nize they must still evolve their dig­i­tal land­scapes and adapt to chang­ing cus­tomer demands, reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments, and strate­gic direc­tion. This mind­set is dri­ving demand for low-code, rapid appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment solu­tions that can accom­mo­date inno­va­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion with­out the need for advanced inte­gra­tion skills. 

Low-code/no-code solu­tions empow­er exist­ing devel­op­ers to uti­lize their expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of the orga­ni­za­tion while quick­ly build­ing new busi­ness capa­bil­i­ties around exist­ing SAP appli­ca­tions on their own sched­ules. More impor­tant­ly, the tech­nol­o­gy does not require a full migra­tion to SAP S/4HANA or addi­tion­al train­ing on pro­gram­ming languages. 

Pillir’s team of tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness experts observe this phe­nom­e­non reg­u­lar­ly, espe­cial­ly when SAP cus­tomers are look­ing to migrate their lega­cy ABAP code with its rapid appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment plat­form EdgeReady Cloud. Mod­ern­iz­ing an SAP land­scape and main­tain­ing lega­cy invest­ment call for a solu­tion helps build new appli­ca­tion and main­tain lega­cy busi­ness log­ic and process­es while enhanc­ing and dig­i­tiz­ing process­es. A plat­form that con­verts lega­cy appli­ca­tions auto­mat­i­cal­ly to mobile-ready, cloud-based appli­ca­tions is the answer.

Where ERP Inno­va­tion Becomes Busi­ness Transformation

Busi­ness­es that are look­ing into devel­op­ment plat­forms to mod­ern­ize their SAP sys­tem need to con­sid­er tech­nolo­gies that ful­fill five fun­da­men­tal requirements:

• Com­bine busi­ness process man­age­ment, low code, and no code in one visu­al expe­ri­ence that brings var­i­ous stake­hold­ers togeth­er to fast-track the cre­ation of new busi­ness capabilities.

• Base the devel­op­er expe­ri­ence on build­ing visu­al mod­els of your appli­ca­tion, rather than writ­ing lines of code.

• Enhance the refac­tor­ing of lega­cy appli­ca­tions with deep­er, native inte­gra­tion with the ERP, which has­tens the mod­ern­iza­tion process by extract­ing the lega­cy ABAP cus­tom code and con­vert­ing it direct­ly into low-code objects.

• Enable busi­ness-led IT with a com­bi­na­tion of speed, flex­i­bil­i­ty, con­trol, mon­i­tor­ing, and gov­er­nance to expand new busi­ness capabilities.

• Deliv­er pro­gres­sive web apps (PWA) and hybrid and native appli­ca­tions on all con­sumer and rugged devices — online and offline — enabled by one sim­ple brows­er-based devel­op­ment experience.

Low-code/no-code solu­tions, such as Pillir’s EdgeReady Cloud, address­es these needs and the process of mod­ern­iz­ing exist­ing dig­i­tal invest­ments regard­less of their stage in the SAP migra­tion jour­ney. The tech­nol­o­gy helps cre­ate a more effi­cient host­ed envi­ron­ment with a low learn­ing curve for users, accel­er­at­ing adop­tion of these new­ly mod­ern­ized appli­ca­tions. These solu­tions also offer the abil­i­ty to ​“clean up” the SAP core, sim­pli­fy­ing any future migra­tions as the core is more standardized. 

From Vision to Real­i­ty Through Incre­men­tal Change

The pres­sure to mod­ern­ize and opti­mize the val­ue of every process is increas­ing­ly high as busi­ness­es nav­i­gate their way through a high­ly dynam­ic and com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place — and lega­cy ERP is cer­tain­ly no exception. 

Busi­ness­es must mod­ern­ize and alle­vi­ate their ​“tech­ni­cal debt” by stream­lin­ing their process­es and cre­at­ing effi­cien­cies, if they hope to remain viable in a world that con­tin­ues to dig­i­tal­ly trans­form. Yet, this may present a dilem­ma for com­pa­nies that are under pres­sure to meet bud­getary con­cerns and avoid cost­ly dis­rup­tion and down­time, espe­cial­ly in a post-pan­dem­ic economy. 

Clean­ing up that dig­i­tal tech­ni­cal debt does not have to be a whole­sale move to an entire­ly new envi­ron­ment, espe­cial­ly if a busi­ness is not ready for it. Instead, with the right tools, employ­ees can shape the future of the company’s dig­i­tal land­scape by devel­op­ing capa­bil­i­ties on their own pace, accord­ing to their most press­ing pri­or­i­ties. Then bit by bit, depart­ment by depart­ment, appli­ca­tion by appli­ca­tion, orga­ni­za­tions can mod­ern­ize their ERP land­scape accord­ing to what­ev­er strat­e­gy and time­line best suits their busi­ness models.